• 1  Jacques Guyot and Thierry Rolland, Les Archives audiovisuelles. Histoire, culture, politique, Pari (...)

1In order to address the issue of what constitutes cultural heritage in the case of ephemeral digital devices, a historical detour via “pre-digitization” conservation logics is useful on several accounts. The case of vinyl records illustrates how the growth of a new medium, along with new musical forms, revolutionized the music industry’s strategies and everyday practices as from the mid-twentieth century. The massive increase in music production, particularly in the field of popular song (les variétés), gave rise to debates on the cultural value of sound recordings in connection with the issue of legal deposit. Since the legal deposit system was linked to the work’s medium rather than the work itself, the idea of classing records as heritage created tensions and controversies within cultural institutions, and prompted the Head of the French National Sound Archives (la Phonothèque nationale) to rally to the cause of the SNEP, the French Recording Industry’s Trade Union (Syndicat des éditeurs phonographiques). Jacques Guyot and Thierry Rolland have underlined the paradoxical status of mass-media artifacts which are produced “for immediate consumption, in vast numbers and are conceived from the start as ephemeral and also fragile,” and yet they “constitute a precious heritage resource on several accounts.”1 Our historical detour can thus throw light on the changing norms and practices presiding over heritage-creation, and, more importantly, it can raise broader issues concerning the status of artistic works in contemporary societies.

• 2  Simon Frith, “L’industrialisation de la musique” [1988], translation Gérôme Guibert and Marc Kaise (...)
• 3  Mario D’Angelo, La Renaissance du disque, Paris, La Documentation française, 1989, p. 13.
• 4  Simon Frith, “L’industrialisation de la musique” [1988], translation Gérôme Guibert and Marc Kaise (...)

2Simon Frith argues that because music in the twentieth century is not “the starting-point of an industrial process —the raw material which everyone fights for— but in fact the end product,” a number of convergent dynamics are required for the production of music.2 He adds that one should take into account all the mediations involved in music’s production and consumption. One should consider 1. the effects of technological progress (which situate the recording industry within the broader context of electrical goods production and the development of radio, cinema and television); 2. the different stages in the music market’s organization, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century when “in all industrialized countries, disk production sky-rocketed;”3 3. the emergence of new musical cultures: “the record industry’s development on a large scale profoundly transformed the way music was experienced, brought about a decline in traditional amateur music-making, and produced new forms of musical consumption and new musical practices.”4

• 5  Some records might have one side which played at 74 rpm and the other at 80 rpm depending on the r (...)

3Adopting Frith’s approach, we can start by noting that disk manufacturing techniques changed in the first decades of the twentieth century from using wax-coated zinc to wax itself and later to lacquer-coated aluminum plate, and additionally electrical recording was invented (1925). These technological advances improved sound quality, increased storage capacity and diversified the ways recording media could be preserved. The 78 rpm record, which became standardized only in 1942,5 was still too limited in practice (five minutes of listening time per side). However, that did not prevent the recorded music market from developing in the inter-war period and overcoming a major crisis, as new musical trends emerged (particularly around jazz).

• 6  The average play-back time per side of a 12”, 33 rpm vinyl record was 22 minutes. In France, the f (...)
• 7  We do not distinguish here between “popular song music” [musique de variétés] and “pop music,” bec (...)
• 8  Simon Frith, “L’industrialisation de la musique” [1988], translation Gérôme Guibert and Marc Kaise (...)
• 9  The first “stereo” record was released in France by Erato in 1958.
• 10  Until then, “stereo” records could only be played back on “stereo” machines.
• 11  This technology lay behind the invention of cheap phonograph record players (like Teppaz’s “Oscar” (...)

4When, in the late 1940s, the US record companies CBS and RCA released 33 rpm LPs and 45 rpm short-playing records respectively, sound recording left behind live performance once and for all. Disk records would henceforth be conceived not simply as a way of reproducing the sounds of live music, but as a musical experience in themselves. Record production thereafter bowed to the constraints of technical formats and to the demands of radio audiences who had become indispensable partners in music’s promotion. When CBS assigned its patent to other record companies, it obliged RCA to do the same, and so imposed new recording strategies: the 33 rpm LP was used for classical music, because of its better sound quality and greater storage capacity;6 and the 45 rpm maxi-single was used as a popular song format,7 inspired by the same logic as 78 rpm, that is, it was composed of “3-minute segments, for today’s easy-listening popular music”.8 Other technological innovations improved the listener’s experience and changed the ways in which music was consumed, through stereo recording,9 universal play-back10 and transistor components11.

• 12  We use Simon Frith’s distinction here between 1950s “rock ‘n’ roll” and 1960s “rock”: cf. Simon Fr (...)
• 13  Gérôme Guibert, La Production de la culture. Le cas des musiques amplifiées en France, Saffré/Pari (...)
• 14  Mario D’Angelo, La Renaissance du disque, Paris, La Documentation française, 1989, p. 60.
• 15  In yéyé terminology.

5By the early 1960s, rock ‘n’ roll12 was no longer solely a US product. French groups had formed and performed (particularly at the Golf Drouot and the Olympia concert halls), radio shows featured French rock (particularly on Europe 1 with Frank Ténot and Daniel Filipacchi’s program Salut les copains [Hi buddies], songs were released on disk (Johnny Hallyday’s Laisse les filles on the Vogue label in 1960, the Chaussettes Noires’ and the Chats Sauvages’ first 45 rpm disks on the Barclay and Pathé-Marconi labels respectively, in 1961), and francophone hits rivaled their US and British counterparts on the juke box. However, the esthetic norms of this music did not correspond to those of the “music-hall milieu”,13 which was focused not on the band but rather on a central personality, as in the cabaret or song recital tradition. Rock ’n’ roll came to be viewed as subversive, especially in the wake of the mass yéyé meeting at the Place de la Nation in Paris in June 1963 and after a few seats were torn out during the first French rock concerts. “Show-biz”, “built around recorded music, which encompassed live recordings, but also, the third arm of this trio, radio and television”,14 concentrated on the solo careers of singers, in line with the tried and tested methods which had been successful for popular singers. The first forms of rock ‘n’ roll nevertheless finally managed to dissociate themselves from the styles developed by Eddie Barclay, Lucien Morisse (“Musicorama” on Europe 1) and Bruno Coquatrix (the Olympia). In the world of the French media, the French rock ‘n’ roll of “the buddies [les copains]”15 was on an equal footing with British and American rock, which was governed by the much broader market of major labels, in which France was simply a local market among others.

• 16  We compiled this data from the following sources: Jacques Masson-Forestier, L’Industrie phonograph (...)
• 17  Jacques Masson-Forestier, N. I., CIDD, no. 30, 31 March 1969 (source: CIDD Archives).
• 18  cf. Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Baby-boomers. Une génération. 1945-1969, Paris, Fayard, 2003. (...)
• 19  Many specialists have classed The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was (...)

6It was precisely during this period that disk record sales really took off, especially after the 45 rpm single came onto the market. This format could accommodate only one or two songs per side and was ideal for “hits”: in 1967, almost 22 million 45 rpm records were sold, as opposed to 9.5 million 45 rpm singles; in 1970, there were only 14 million 45 rpm records sold against more than 35 million 45 rpm singles.16 A poll carried out for the French Recording Industry’s Trade Union by the French Institute for the study of Public Opinion (Institut Études et Sondages de l’Opinion Publique) in November 1968 showed that more than 80% of the 150 record outlets surveyed thought that a hit available as a single would generate higher sales than if it was available only as a 45 rpm disk.17 During the same period, sales of 33 rpm LPs shot up from 11.2 million to 26 million. Apart from the fact that the 1960s was a period of economic and demographic growth, with an exponential rise in electrical equipment purchases, and increasing purchasing-power for young people,18 these new practices can be attributed to two major changes: first, a substantial expansion of distribution networks (wholesalers, mail-order sales and increased numbers of sales points), which reduced the purchase price for short-playing formats; secondly, the appearance in that same year of 1968, of the first “concept albums”, which boosted sales of the LP format.19

• 20  Simon Frith, “L’industrialisation de la musique” [1988], translation Gérôme Guibert and Marc Kaise (...)
• 21  Roger Décollogne, “La phonothèque nationale,” BBF, vol. 12, no. 2, 1967, p. 35-60. [Online] http:/ (...)
• 22  In the sense of record producer.
• 23  Simon Frith, “L’industrialisation de la musique” [1988], translation Gérôme Guibert and Marc Kaise (...)

7The vinyl disk was not, however, the only “technological root of rock”20 to have given rise to alternative uses (in particular “light music” bands using 33 rpm disks). Magnetic tape also enabled smaller record companies to develop, thanks to cheaper recording costs. Producers —those who invest in recording the musical contents— came to occupy an increasingly pivotal role in a market which was initially driven by electrical equipment manufacturers. In September 1966, the Head of the National Sound Archives put together an inventory of all recording companies.21 Magnetic tape also altered the creative process (possibility of arrangements, vocal doubling, etc.) and, with the arrival of multi-track consoles, a new intermediary figure, the artistic director, emerged.22 The artistic director transformed the recording into “an art form, with the result that rock could become ’serious’ music in all respects,”23 particularly by challenging the ways manufacturers linked certain formats to certain established genres, which in turn affected the principles of conservation applied.

• 24  Valérie Game and Clément Oury, “Le dépôt légal de l’Internet à la BnF : adapter une mission patrim (...)
• 25  Valérie Game and Clément Oury, “Le dépôt légal de l’Internet à la BnF : adapter une mission patrim (...)

8The legal deposit system, introduced by an ordinance of Francis I on 28 December 1537, obliged printers and publishers to deposit at the “Librairie” of the Château de Blois a copy of every printed book sold in the kingdom. The idea was both to create a heritage library and to introduce “an instrument of control over publishing activity”.24 The scheme was done away with during the French Revolution and then reintroduced, along with reproduction rights, in 1793. Thereafter it developed in response to new media (engravings, prints, maps, plans, musical scores, photographs, films and audiovisual documents). Today, all publishers (including printers, producers, distributors and importers, associations, trade unions or even authors) are obliged to send to the French National Library two copies of their publication, at the latest on the day it is put into circulation, or one copy for a print-run below 300. The 2006 law concerning copyright and related rights in the information society provided the legal framework for the legal deposit of the web.25

• 26  Sophie Maisonneuve, L’Invention du disque. 1877-1949, Paris, Éditions des archives contemporaines, (...)

9The deposit of sound recordings was made obligatory on 19 May 1925, but the law was not really respected initially. Producers of cylinder records, sapphire ball stylus disks and needle-cut disks were not always aware of the heritage value of their products, since these were accessories to talking machines, and gramophone players were often linked to the sale of bicycles, haberdashery and electricity.26 It was not until the ordinance of 8 April 1938 and the founding of the National Sound Archives under the leadership of Roger Dévigne (who was also Head of the Museum of Speech [le musée de la Parole]), that the tide began to turn: after 1940, recording companies began systematically depositing their works, despite the temporary suspension of the scheme under the Occupation.

• 28  Roger Décollogne, “La phonothèque nationale,” BBF, vol. 12, no. 2, 1967, p. 35-60. [Online] http:/ (...)

11The activisim of the Head of the Sound Archives certainly had a positive impact on the number of works deposited: more than 21,000 disk records between 1954 and 1958, and more than 31,000 in the five years thereafter. The annual average for the 1960s was around 7,500 records.28 But it should not be overlooked that it was precisely at this time that microgroove technology began to edge out 78s, as new strategies on the part of record producers and manufacturers, and new modes of consumption, developed around rock ‘n’ roll. Roger Décollogne accordingly divided sound recordings, for the purposes of legal deposit, into two categories: “variétés” and “other documents”.

• 29  Roger Décollogne, Correspondence with Jacques Masson-Forestier, 27 March 1969 (CIDD Archives).

12From 1962 onwards, the category of “variétés” encompassed “songs”, “dance music” and “light music”, whereas the category of “other documents” comprised “instrumental works”, “vocal” and “ethnic” works and “works of diction”.29 A further distinction was introduced in 1964 following the establishment of the International Federation of Sound Archives [Fédération Internationale des Phonothèques]. Its French national committee considered that “jazz” and “sound documents for children” had specific characteristics which were not found in “variétés”. Thereafter there would be four categories: “variétés”, “classical/diction”, “jazz”, and “children’s records”. Further terminological changes occurred, and in 1968, 8 sub-categories were introduced for the variétés category: “songs”, “dance”, “light music”, “jazz”, “singer-songwriters” [chansonniers], “advertising”, “miscellaneous”, and “pop”.

• 30  Décollogne, Roger, Correspondence with Jacques Masson-Forestier, 27 March 1969 (CIDD Archives). (...)

13The Head of the National Sound Archives hoped to show through these changes that the category of variétés accounted for only half of French annual production. This proved, in his words, that “sound recordings do not solely serve to entertain, as some of the National Sound Archives’ detractors have no qualms asserting”.30 Since the legal deposit system was based around the medium of the work, and many songs, and particularly hits, were published both as singles and on albums, the category of variétés received an inflated number of legal deposits. At a time when cultural policy almost entirely neglected music, and when the cultural dimension of disk records was increasingly criticized, the Head of the National Sound Archives decided to support the recording companies in an attempt to transform how records were viewed:

• 32  Jacques Guyot and Thierry Rolland, Les Archives audiovisuelles. Histoire, culture, politique, Pari (...)

14As a result, recordings of light music, especially hits —which arguably epitomize ephemeral material— could be assigned a heritage value: they are the traces which reveal the dominant cultural values of the period and the public, and the conditions under which the disk records themselves were produced and experienced. As Jacques Guyot and Thierry Rolland stress, the preservation of mass media enables one “to examine the past and set immediately topical events at a critical distance by envisaging facts and human experience in the perspective of the long time of political history”.32

• 33  Marc Kaiser, Les Politiques publiques liées aux musiques populaires en France : la dimension cultu (...)

15Roger Décollogne’s attitude was logical enough for his position, but difficult to reconcile with the orientations of the Ministry of Culture at the time. The Ministry privileged “serious” music and supported its teaching, broadcasting, composers and musical research centers.33 Popular songs and “light” music in general were treated as not worth transmitting and not forming part of a common legacy. That is why the Head of the Sound Archives, in his defense of a policy of cultural recognition for the disk record as a medium in itself, turned for support to representatives of the record industry, rather than to state institutions.

• 34  Philippe Urfalino, L’Invention de la politique culturelle, Paris, La Documentation française, 1996 (...)

16Despite the fact that the democratization of culture in the second half of the twentieth century had given birth to a new “philosophy of government action”,34 the record’s cultural value was far from established in the eyes of the general public and in the political sphere. Since recording companies were obliged by law to comply with the legal deposit system, records gained a certain heritage status, but they were not really recognized as artistic and cultural works as such.

• 35  Sophie Maisonneuve, L’Invention du disque. 1877-1949, Paris, Éditions des archives contemporaines, (...)

17Whereas in Great Britain discourses on music’s esthetic value came mainly from societies of enthusiasts, in France the source was generally the press and official institutions.35 Awards for records were first instituted in France in 1931 by Maurassian journalists around the weekly paper Candide. When the Candide Prize disappeared at the Liberation, it was replaced by two associations which had organized themselves into Academies (L’Académie du Disque Français and l’Académie Charles Cros), which awarded prizes for the best French musical recordings. The President of the Recording Industry’s Trade Union was invited for the first time to make a speech at the prize-giving ceremony of the Académie du Disque Français in 1975. At the time, the sector’s prime battle was for disks to be recognized as artistic and cultural works and not simply as consumer products.